How Price Drops Can Contribute to Your Success on iOS App Store

Many developers admit that occasional price drops are the major method of attracting new users to their apps. Not PR, not advertising, not social media promotion – just price drops! In this post we’ll find out the reasons why this strategy works and discuss ways to get the most advantage of a temporary price drop. If you have developed a paid iOS app, you absolutely can’t miss this information.

Why does it work?

Some app blogs have App Store crawlers that “inform” them about the price drops. Without any PR activities, you get a chance to be mentioned on some major app review websites!

As a result, thousands of people learn about your app and download it.

The increased downloads during the price drop period contribute to the improved rankings and add up to your app’s visibility, especially if you manage to reach the top in a particular category and/or country. This way, even after the price drop period is over, your app is visible enough to drive more organic downloads than before.

How to set up a price drop in iTunes Connect?

Go to Pricing in your dashboard, select a period, and choose Free under Price Tier. In the situation on the screenshot, the app was free for July 30th and July 31st. When July the 30th started in Australia, for example, the price drop went into effect in this country.

How to make the most of the price drop?

The more resources will write about the price drop, the more effective the whole campaign will be. So here is what you can do.

1) Tell your existing users about it

If you have several apps, set up a cross-promo campaign: send a pop-up message telling about the sale of your app with two buttons. One will close the message, the other will redirect them to the app’s page on the App Store. There are many SDKs that can help you create this type of campaign. When our AppDK opens for external users, you’ll be able to create such campaigns there for free. Leave your email here not to miss the launch. The important thing is to pause the cros-promo campaign once the sale is over.

Also, you can tweet about the app sale and mention @igeeksblog in your message, they may retweet you.

3) Submit an app deal to apphookup subreddit

Most of Apphookup subreddit subscribers are Americans. So pick the time to post accordingly. I didn’t measure the impact of posting on this subreddit, but the number of subscribers (more than 50 thousand) speaks for itself.

There is no rule as to how often you should cut your apps’ prices. For example, some developers say that a 4-hour sale may boost the app’s profits. Some of our price drops brought us nothing, but the latest one resulted in thousands of new users. You can only find out if you try.